Skyrim Anyone?

• The cake used to be a lie, but then it took an arrow in the knee.

Oh Weyrleader, My Weyrleader

• My favorite writer Ann Mcaffrey died... I'm surprised how saddened I am by it. When Arthur C. Clark died I was like: He was still alive? but for the dragon master I feel like my surrogate mother just died. She will be missed.
• I'm gonna have to redouble my own efforts to try and take up some of the slack her absence leaves.
• Elizabeth Moon is hereby forbidden from dying ever.
• In other famous author news I finally finished A Dance With Dragon the newest Game of Thrones book and was quite disappointed.
• Its not that it wasn't a good book, it was. It just doesn't compare with the others. Reading the first four books was like sex; reading this one was like... riding a swing set.
• When I finished it and reflected back on some of the character and chapters he included my only reaction "What the fuck was that shit?"
• In other places it kept setting the stage for really awesome things to happen and then being like "Psych! read the next one." I REFUSE TO PUT UP WITH THIS DRAGON BALL Z HORSESHIT!
• (in this DBZ analogy the Dornish prince is defiantly Hercule the asshat who wastes entire episodes you thought were going to be about one of the real characters, you know the ones who are cool and I care about?)
• Does anyone else ever wonder what happened to Rickon? I've considered writing a letter to Martin and reminding him that there was actually another Stark. Rosey the hooker had more follow up than poor Rickon and Shaggydog. (god bless HBO btw)

Short Story Experiment: Space Marines with Ray Guns Blowing Shit up for its Own Sake. (It will NOT be an allegory for Iraq it will be an allegory for Space Marines With Ray Guns Blowing Shit Up)

• Having finished my Modsoldiers first draft I can't do much anything more with the story until I've gotten some editing and feedback on it.
• The next day when I went to write and realized I was (for the moment) done with the writing stage of Modsoldiers and should start working on one of my other projects. I found myself more than a little dumbfounded... Now what? I have so many stories I want to right.
• I think this is the first time I've ever felt this kind of indecision because until now the only time I would stop working on one project was when I had some inspiration for some other story and started working on it.
• I thought about perhaps going back to work on ME2S which is, next to Modsoldiers, the closest any of my books is to completion, but as long as I know I'll be turning my attention back to Modsoldiers in the hopefully near future I'm reluctant to dive back into another massive not-quite-all-sorted-out protonovel. Also I'm still rather burnt out on ME2S from my last stretch of working on it (i.e. I opened the folder for it on my computer, saw all of those horrifyingly familiar files, and was struck by the powerful urge to gouge my eyes out then set my myself on fire.)
• So for the last couple of days I've just kind of toyed around with a bunch of fun ideas I've had kicking around but can't seem to wrangle into anything like a plot, or stared at my laptop and played minecraft.
• Today however I recalled a conversation I had with my friend Jake (the one who shouldn't have dick skinning gloves) and have a new idea for what to write while struggling to get Modsoldiers cleaned up.
• I've often bemoaned my difficulty in writing short stories, which I've heard and read are vital to break into genera fiction, and on this particular day Jake said something along the lines of, "You know I'll bet you could write a pretty badass fight scene that was about the length of a short story. You know something along the lines of No Disintigrations, Please."
•  No Disintigrations, Please is one of the better known Star Wars short stories (its in the compilation Tales from the New Republic). It doesn't have too much in the way of mind blowing plotting or painting a brilliant tapestry of multidimensional characters. What it does have is Boba Fett kicking a helluvalot of ass. The story is that Boba has a target who's protective elder brother is the commander of a full blown imperial planetary garrison. Boba Fett vs. an entire imperial garrison: fight!
• This is an interesting idea to me because while I worry that a story that is light on plot and character in exchange for being heavy on hardcore ass whupping isn't what editors are looking for, I am good at writing and choreographing cool fight scenes, and I can create them fairly easily.
• To make a long story short I've started a second short story tentatively titled, either Assault Drop or Combat Drop.
• I've always wanted to write a full scale combat drop by sci-fi power suit wearing ass kicking space marines; think John Steakly's Armor meets Saving Private Ryan. Now I am.

The Take-No-Prisoners-Yes-Even-the-Younglings Juggernaught of Pakistani Industry

• This is something that has bothered me for years: why in the hell is every goddamn soccer ball in the world from Pakistan?
• How could this have come to be and why has it stayed this way?
• I would have thought that at least India would maintain some kind of soccer ball production base to ensure their internal supply of soccer balls could be maintained if they're already volatile relationship with their neighbor worsened and the Pakis began a full scale soccer ball embargo.
• Having written all that down I feel almost certain I've started down the road to being the next Tom Clancy, I'll bet he saw something like this and that was where the idea for Hunt for the Red October or Clear and Present Danger came from. I can see it now: new best seller Rogue Cell: The Football Agenda
• I hope saying Pakis doesn't get me put on some sort of list or go all Salman Rushdie on me.
• Now that I think about it though if no one had ever seen or heard of the Satanic Verses it probably wouldn't have caused such a stink so I think I'll be fine unless those few noble russians I spoke of the other day or, god forbid, Sally the Imaginary Hypothetical Blog Reader, put out some kind of fwata alert on me.
• Man us atheists miss out on all the cool vocab religions get; Islam has Fwata's and Jihads, and even the catholics get stuff like transubstantiation and excommunication (which sounds like a big ass sci-fi space gun or something; seriously if Moff Tarkin had said, "Transubstantiate the Excommunicator!" instead of lame old, "You may begin the demonstration." Leia probably woulda talked; that shit sounds scary.
• We do get Apostate though which sounds kind of badass. (Note to other atheists: the word apostate is like tyrannosaur urine to a Christian, one whiff of it and even Mormon missionaries will shy away from your territory.
• Catholic: "My title is lay person."
• Me: "Nice to meet you, my title is apostate *boom crakooom crash!*"
• Catholic: "My god! So... many... syllables and hard... consonants..."
• Second Catholic: "I think I just shat myself."

Concerning Bacta

• There comes a time in every man's life when, due to a set of circumstances far to embarrassing to ever explain to anyone, he finds his crotch in terrible need of a bacta tank. When that time comes the man is, unfortunately, totally fucked because bacta isn't real.
• There's no particular reason I'm mentioning this now though; none at all.
• I finally rediscovered the edit post button and in finding it I am only more confused as to how I could have failed to find it.
• Apparently 14% of my blogs page views last months were by Russians (or at least people in Russia), clearly my philosophies have a broader appeal than anyone had thought.
• Everyone had thought they had no appeal anywhere to anyone, but 8 Russians proved them wrong by virtue of they probably ended up here on accident.

Musings

• It seems odd to me but now when I read back over this blog it seems better than I've ever thought it was before. Sad that I feel this now after everyone has stopped reading it (Except Sally the hypothetical imaginary blog reader).
• I enjoy the game minecraft alot, in fact my map (I only have one) Legionholm is something I'm rather proud of. Legionholm is a full blown castle, not like other minecraft castles I've seen it is massive (its curtain walls are more than a kilometer in diameter) and its got amenities and what not. instead of a keep that is hollow or just contains a bunch of impressive architecture my keep actually has the barracks, kitchens, privy, equipment storage etc for a 2,000 man garrison. I might post pics and such here at some point.
• I've been having trouble writing for the last couple of days, I just feel terribly unmotivated to do anything, it is causing me quite a lot of concern.

• I kind of wish I had someone to share this with that would be as excited about this as I am, sadly the huzzahs of Sally the imaginary hypothetical blog reader aren't quite cutting it.
• I can't even go drink to celebrate because alcohol interacts with some of my meds leaving me 85% asleep for the next week which isn't quite worth it.
• "Shrugs"

!HOLY SHIT!

• I finally actually finished a rough manuscript for Modsoldiers all the way! Huzzah!
• Unfortunately now comes the nastier bits of trying to publish a novel: A: first I'll need someone to edit it (copy editing and content screening) I'll probably end up having to pay someone if I ever want the whole thing to ever get a thorough going over. and B: submitting the edited manuscript to one publisher after another (one at a time of course), waiting for their response, and praying that they'll actually respond for good or ill sometime before the heat death of the universe.
• Writing the manuscript I'm only constrained by my own abilities and work ethic but these steps will depend completely on cooperation from others, something I can bank on never getting.

I Think I May Finally See Why Trekkies are Perceived as "Weirdos"

• My second favorite line of dialogue from Star Trek Voyager: "Get the cheese to sick bay. Have the doctor look at it as soon as possible."
• It's only so memorable because getting that cheese to sick bay really was a big fucking deal.

Fuck Career Builder

• The only job offer I've received through their excellent services was actually a check cashing scam; apparently these cock suckers think the the only thing I'm qualified for is getting robbed.
• The depressing part is that I have the suspicion that that is all I'm qualified for.
• I'm officially adding Career Builder to the list of places I'm gonna fucking burn down when I finally have my break down.

Competence?

• Apparently I have forgotten how to edit an already posted post, all I can remember about editing old posts is that I used to know how to do it and that it was blindingly obvious how.
• I'm just mature enough to wish that I'd posted twice more in 2010.
• I wish flinging poop was socially acceptable; monkeys always look so confident when they're flinging their shit around. Seriously it's like they're James Dean and shit flinging is their cigarette and blue jeans. I don't smoke cause lung cancer and death make writing difficult (though it does make one's writing far more lucrative), but I feel like throwing my poop is a much better alternative.
• "What are you up to Tom?"
• "Nothing much, just crouching here flinging some shit around."
• Man, Tom's so smooth and popular with the ladies maybe I should be throwing poop everywhere too. Plus it would be cheaper than buying a car.

Does Writing Make Everyone Bipolar?

• When I'm writing a lot (which I am right now) I inevitably end up having one of two opinions about my writing and chances for sucess. Either A: "I AM A SHINING GOLDEN GOD!" OR B: "I should really just slit my wrists now for efficiencies sake." Objective analysis of my writing is absolutely impossible, I think I see now why becoming a parent turn you into a nutcase.
• I really like the bullet point format for my posts here, but this time I only really have that one comment and having a bullet point list with only one bullet point just looks sad so I've added this bullet point about making an extra bullet point.
• It's now clear to me that this blog really is worth everyone's time... totally.